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- #1,431
flowerbug
Garden Master
for those who don't care about computer stuff and/or don't wanna know you can skip this post... 
otherwise i now assume you have given consent to be geeked at a bit about what's up...
i run Linux and i did my once in a great while update of my computer system and upgraded my Debian stable partition to the recent version, which means updating over a thousand pieces of software and downloading all those updates over a rather slow connection (it took about an hour and a half to just get everything download).
Debian stable changes the major version about every two to three years and then gets minor security and other bug fixes about every few months. i don't normally use it at all other than if something breaks with my daily system which is running Debian testing.
if you don't know what that means is it is another version of Linux and Debian puts it all together via various methods and running testing is a way for me to help out as it gets updates as the various volunteers get around to working on things and uploading their changes (often there are changes every day but they don't usually impact me). so every morning i do the same sort of routine, i turn on the computer, check for updates, if there's some that affect what i'm running then i make them and sometimes restart my computer to make sure all is working and then i get on with my day - about once every three to five years a change will happen that breaks something and i'll need to restart the computer and use the stable version to fix the testing version and then restart again. it's all ok with me. if i can help someone else avoid an issue i'm glad i can contribute a bug report or a fix or workaround...
and then i can get on to e-mail, gardening forums, usenet, checking the weather, etc...
otherwise i now assume you have given consent to be geeked at a bit about what's up...
i run Linux and i did my once in a great while update of my computer system and upgraded my Debian stable partition to the recent version, which means updating over a thousand pieces of software and downloading all those updates over a rather slow connection (it took about an hour and a half to just get everything download).
Debian stable changes the major version about every two to three years and then gets minor security and other bug fixes about every few months. i don't normally use it at all other than if something breaks with my daily system which is running Debian testing.
if you don't know what that means is it is another version of Linux and Debian puts it all together via various methods and running testing is a way for me to help out as it gets updates as the various volunteers get around to working on things and uploading their changes (often there are changes every day but they don't usually impact me). so every morning i do the same sort of routine, i turn on the computer, check for updates, if there's some that affect what i'm running then i make them and sometimes restart my computer to make sure all is working and then i get on with my day - about once every three to five years a change will happen that breaks something and i'll need to restart the computer and use the stable version to fix the testing version and then restart again. it's all ok with me.
if i can help someone else avoid an issue i'm glad i can contribute a bug report or a fix or workaround...and then i can get on to e-mail, gardening forums, usenet, checking the weather, etc...
